Many firms rely on external organizations to acquire knowledge that is useful for developing creative new products and reducing the time needed to bring these products to market. Cluster theory suggests that this knowledge is often obtained from organizations located in close geographic proximity. Specifically, proximity is assumed to foster heightened face-to-face communication, strengthened relational ties, increased knowledge acquisition, and enhanced new product outcomes. The authors identify the limitations of these assumptions and offer an enriched model of the influence of geographic proximity on new product development, which they test using both a cross-sectional survey of 155 firms in the U.S. optics industry and a longitudinal follow-up survey of 73 of these firms. They find that firms located in close proximity engage in increased face-to-face communication, but this communication has little effect on the acquisition of the types of knowledge that lead to enhanced new product outcomes. In contrast, they find that e-mail communication leads to both enhanced new product creativity and development speed. In addition, they find that relational ties moderate rather than mediate the path connecting geographic proximity and new product outcomes. These findings imply that the new product development outcomes typically ascribed to close geographic proximity may actually be attributed to strong relational ties.

The New Zealand wine industry has been, and continues to go through rapid growth since the early 1990's. The industry needed to consider how it administered this growth and presents itself to the local and world markets. As a result, New Zealand Winegrowers has been established, as a joint initiative of the New Zealand Grape Growers Council and the Wine Institute of New Zealand, to bring the industry under "one roof", and to bring the "New Zealand Wine" brand to the attention of a global market. The industry is at a point where many of New Zealand's oldest and best-known wineries have merged with, or have been purchased by, overseas conglomerates. Empirical research was executed to gauge the sentiments of the market as to the way forward.

The results of the research and the conclusions reviews the potential for New Zealand's small and medium sized enterprise (SME) wineries to have successful cooperative marketing practices in the future. An outcome is a recent development in the New Zealand wine industry, the so-called 'Family of 12', made up of a group of winemakers who have combined their marketers in an international marketing push. The conclusions and recommendations may provide some inputs for other Southern hemisphere countries like South Africa, Australia and Chile to deal with increased marketing competition.

In this research, the authors propose that the relationship between satisfaction and repurchase behavior is moderated by customer, relational, and marketplace characteristics. They further hypothesize that the moderating effects emerge if repurchase is measured as objective behavior but not if it is measured as repurchase intentions. To test for systematic differences in effects, the authors estimate identical models using both longitudinal repurchase measures and survey measures as the dependent variable. The results suggest that the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase behavior is contingent on the moderating effects of convenience, competitive intensity, customer involvement, and household income. As the authors predicted, the results are significantly different for self-reported repurchase intentions and objective repurchase behavior. The conceptual framework and empirical findings reinforce the importance of moderating influences and offer new insights that enhance the understanding of what drives repurchase behavior.

The consumer market can be segmented in various ways. This article concentrates on the calculation of the size of the South African consumer market, segmented by geographical area and demographic characteristics of households. Geographical segmentation is shown by province while the size of the South African consumer market is shown by population group, income group, life stage and life plane. The determining factors in segmentation of households by life plane and life stage are the level of education and age of the head of the household. Six life planes and five life stages are distinguished. In the absence of national expenditure data by Living Standards Measure (LSM®) group, segmentation by LSM group is explained by means of expenditure data of households in Gauteng. Ten different LSM groups can be distinguished, depending on the amenities owned by the household, services used by them and where they live. Segmentation by type of outlet where consumers spend their money is explained in the article according to two major types of outlets namely, formal and informal outlets, each further subdivided into four groups.

Consumer knowledge and expertise of an industries prices, products and store location add to the ease at which consumers are able to cherry pick, they are informed of discounted prices on products as well as the product assortment of a particular store, through marketing and promotions. Many define cherry picking as taking the best and leaving the rest. Cherry picking is used to portray both buyer and seller. Various sellers can be viewed as those who are selective about which consumer profile they choose to target, whereas consumers are selective about which products or services they purchase. This article will focus on the consumers and their motive for cherry picking. Consumers who are branded as cherry pickers are price sensitive shoppers with no brand loyalty but this market segment has been found to be sizable, heterogeneous, and potentially attractive for retailers, contrary to the myth that they are a retailers' nemesis. Price knowledge means the ability of buyers to keep prices in mind; it influences what, when, where and how much they buy. Cherry pickers build price competitions between retailers; therefore they should strive to have the most attractive offers and weekly advertisements, in order to draw the cherry pickers in and obtaining a greater turnover.

This is my perception and how my team and I see things developing in South Africa and internationally with regards to the retail market. I have chosen to focus mainly on South Africa as I am passionate about this country - we cannot control the rest of the world but we can control what happens in our own country.

Finally! As the title suggests, a book on social media that cuts to the chase. Social media is here to stay and no matter the list of reasons why your company feels it should not engage in social media, sooner or later, you'll have to start, because your competitors already have.